"Italy's participation as guest of honor in two of the most prestigious European cultural events (the Festival du Livre in Paris and in 2024 the Buchmesse in Frankfurt, ed.) as well as recognizing the contribution made by the Italic civilization to feeling global, represents a great opportunity to continue on the path of an osmosis that increasingly consolidates the common platform of values on which the European House is founded".
Thus,
in an interview with Corriere della Sera, the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella
.
"Reading is essential. We should read more and, perhaps, reading Marco Polo's The Million could help us understand the spirit in which the world should be viewed".
Mattarella also underlines the importance of Dante who, in Purgatory, "throws out a message perhaps also useful in the communicative Babel of our time. I would like to deliver it to the youngest".
With respect to European identity, Mattarella states: "From large cities to small villages, communities in every latitude of our continent are recognizable by their squares, their places of worship, their town halls, their palaces and their markets, their landscapes. Each of these signs indicates, identifies Europe. The European dimension is what we share as the fruit of the deposit left by plural cultures,
The Renaissance, says Mattarella, "is the product of Italian ingenuity in a state of particular grace" but then spread "in the European courts. The feeling of belonging was, therefore, to a great culture, which did not separate East and West European but permeated every intellectual milieu. I would like to think of a new European renaissance, open to the whole world".
"European fraternity must be understood as an awareness of a common destiny and goes beyond solidarity".
The expression of the founding fathers 'complement each other', for Mattarella, "represents the most significant thing imaginable for Europe 'union of diversity', inspired by a vision that knows how to look far, without the risk of the flattery of I trip over artificially created barriers".
Furthermore, for Mattarella "we could speak of 'European fraternity' as the acquisition of more authentic awareness, which also prevails over current narratives of the crisis of coexistence with the immigrants who arrive on our coasts or on other European borders, fleeing wars, famines, climatic upheavals. There is no shortage of good examples of 'European fraternity': the doors are open to Ukrainian refugees. However, principles are such if they do not allow for convenient declinations. Fraternity would be stronger - says the head of state - if it were always the same reserved for those fleeing from other wars, from other hunger, from other catastrophes, along the Mediterranean line, for example".
"The cancel culture against Russian literature and art - another passage from the interview - appears as a mistaken gesture that would like to blame backwards the products of centuries of European history, of which that culture is a full part. The intellectuals more informed have not failed to stigmatize this vision. What kills culture is homogenization, conformity".
"The Italian cultural industry is a driving force behind our production model - he continues - I like to think that Paris and Frankfurt also mean recognition of the commitment and activity of our publishing industry, fully projected into the dialogue of culture international. The book is an extraordinary vehicle that draws attention to the Bel Paese. Italy enjoys a very high reputation abroad, which invests its past but also its present. It fascinates for its public spirit, sense of community, its vocation for peace. Certainly being Italian in itself appears to be a value. And it should not be dissipated".
